


Chase to the Cut

by azephirin



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Era, Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Birthday, Child Abuse, Drunkenness, F/M, Friendship, Hair, Pre-Het, Sharing a Bed, girl!Kirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-28
Updated: 2010-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Women with short hair always look as if they have somewhere else to go. Women with long hair tend to look as if they belong where they are.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Chase to the Cut

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Not mine, which makes me sadder than you can possibly imagine. Summary and title from "[On Short Hair](http://www.paulwhkan.com/pq/shorthair.html)," by Joan Juliet Buck.
> 
> **Warning:** Discussion of past childhood sexual abuse.

She never wears makeup; her only jewelry consists of her grandfather’s watch, on her left wrist, and, on the fourth finger of her right hand, her mother’s wedding ring from her marriage to Jamie’s father. Her ears aren’t pierced; she opts for trousers instead of the skirt uniform that most of the female cadets prefer.

Her hair, though. Her hair is long, lustrous, and golden, gleaming like sunlight in the afternoon. It falls to the small of her back, but most people don’t see it like that: Day to day, in classes and at meals, she wears it in a ponytail or sometimes a French braid; when she goes out, she has a way of putting it up into some kind of chignon spilling tendrils that make you want to wind them around her fingers until you’re touching her jaw, her throat, the quick beat of her pulse.

Or maybe that’s just McCoy.

At any rate, he does get to touch it—just not like that.

Winter break of their first year, they went to McCoy’s family’s cabin in north Georgia. It was one of the few things Jocelyn hadn't taken—it was and always had been titled to the family trust, not in McCoy’s name. He hadn’t wanted to stay in the dorms over break, and neither had Jamie (though she refused to say so out loud); still, when he informed her that they were going to Georgia and drinking their way through the last two weeks of the year, she hadn’t argued. And they’d gone to Rabun Gap and done just that.

A few nights into it, they were dozing in front of the fire with a bottle of Maker’s Mark after a very successful lamb shank on the grill, and McCoy had roused into semiconsciousness to realize that Jamie’s head was in his lap, her hair draped like a shining curtain over his knees and thighs. McCoy closed his eyes again and tried to put it out of his mind—it wouldn’t do to entertain illicit thoughts about his roommate, who was his best friend and who enjoyed sowing her seeds and who didn’t belong to him. But the weight on his ankles was too heavy and warm to be ignored, and when he opened his eyes and looked down, Jamie’s hair was burnished and glowing in the firelight. She looked so peaceful, with her hair long and tangled and her face relaxed, and finally McCoy couldn’t fight the urge anymore: He ran his fingers through it as lightly as possible, twisting the cornsilk-soft ends around his fingertips.

She woke immediately, pushing herself up on her elbows, blue eyes immediately open, alert, and wary. But then they landed on McCoy, whose hand was frozen midtouch, and she said, sounding entirely awake, “Oh, it’s you”—and was asleep again fifteen seconds later.

He moved his hand and didn’t touch her, or her hair, again until a few nights later, when she rolled her head back into his lap and said drowsily, “’S’okay. It feels nice.”

And so this is what they do sometimes, her head in his lap, his fingers in her hair. He’s the only person who gets to do it. That’s something, at least.

+||+||+

   
McCoy comes home one afternoon in early spring to find her in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror. Her hair is down, and she’s examining a hank of it like it’s an alien life form that has somehow landed on her head. He’s about to back away and let her keep at whatever sort of contemplation this is, but she’s too quick for that. She fixes him with her piercing blue gaze and says, “What do you think I’d look like without it?”

He learned to answer “do you like my new haircut?” and “does this dress make my ass look fat?” during his marriage, but this is not a question for which he has any prior experience. “Bald?” he tries.

Jamie snorts and turns back to the mirror.

“Are you thinking about cutting it?” he asks.

She shrugs and doesn’t look at him. “I’m always thinking about cutting it.”

“You are?” he says, surprised. She’s never said anything, and to the best of his knowledge she never cuts it save for routine maintenance she performs herself.

“I’d look ugly, though, right?” she says by way of answer.

McCoy blinks. “No. You’d still look— You’d look good either way.”

“Huh,” is her only response; then she shakes her hair back, ties it into a ponytail, and shifts her expression into a grin. “So where we going tonight, Bones?”

Abruptly, he realizes that it’s her birthday. He wouldn’t know this if they hadn’t covered the _Kelvin_ incident in McCoy’s “History of Starfleet and Interstellar Exploration” lecture first semester.

“Birthday girl gets to pick,” he says, because she should know that he knows.

But all she does is narrow her eyes and say, “O’Brady’s.”

Great. Because clearly his week isn’t complete, either, without a barroom brawl.  
   


+||+||+

   
He gets her home as drunk as it’s humanly possible to be, but without any physical violence, legal altercations, or intergalactic diplomatic crises. (This isn’t the exaggeration it might seem—McCoy vividly remembers, though he wishes he didn’t, the aftermath of Jamie’s encounter with an ambassador’s daughter in January.)

“It’s m’birthday and I didn’t get laid,” Jamie complains as McCoy stands still for the retinal scan that will let them into their building.

“I share your horror at this tragic event,” McCoy says as the door swings open and he guides her inside.

“You’re bein’—what’s the word—”

“Truthful?”

“No. Meanie. Sarcastic. That’s the word.”

He maneuvers her into the turbolift and manages to get them to the tenth floor. She leans against the wall as he presses his palm against the reader to let them into their room.

He opens the door, and she says, “You didn’t even offer.”

“That’s because I’m not your fallback position, kid.”

“Not my fallback,” she protests, but he ignores it in favor of getting her into the kitchen and then getting water, orange juice, and ibuprofen down her throat. “Mother hen,” she mutters, but doesn’t stop him.

She does, however, insist that she isn’t ready to go to bed yet, so they stay up for a while watching holovids of old movies. Jamie acquiesces to two more glasses of water and another glass of juice, then curls up on the floor with her head in McCoy’s lap. As his fingers make their slow paths through her hair, her eyes fall closed. He tries to nudge her awake so that she’ll make her way to bed; she just curls herself tighter, though, and makes a discontented noise. She doesn’t object when he picks her up, though, and carries her into her room, settling her into bed and tucking the sheet and blanket around her.

She turns to smile drowsily at him—and then grabs his hand, because nothing with Jamie Kirk is ever easy. “Stay ’while,” she says, voice slurred now not just from alcohol but from sleep.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to. He’s spent a fair amount of time in the shower imagining that very invitation.

“Jamie—” he starts.

“Not a sex thing,” she interrupts. “’S just nice.”

He’s never had much luck saying no to her.

He lies down next to her and she settles against him. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and strokes her hair, and she sighs contentedly. “Yeah,” he murmurs after a moment. “It is nice.”

She's still and quiet, and he waits for her breathing to slow down into the even rhythm of sleep. But it doesn’t, even after some times goes by. He’s on the verge of dropping off when she says, “Thanks for not making a big deal over everything.”

He doesn’t respond: He has no idea how to answer that, and he also isn’t a hundred percent clear on what “everything” means, though he suspects that she’s referring to the joint anniversaries of her birth and her father’s death.

He feels her fingers curl into his shirt, and she continues, “Want you to go somewhere with me tomorrow.”

“Sure,” he says, a little surprised. Usually she doesn’t ask—just drags him along.

“Bones,” she says, like she’s trying to get his attention, like they haven’t just been talking.

“Right here, kid.”

“Gonna tell you something I never told anybody before. Not even my mom or my brother. Okay?”

His hand is somehow cradling her head against his chest, and she’s not fighting him, just letting him hold her that much closer. “Okay,” he says.

“M’mom always used to say that my hair was so pretty. Looked like my dad’s, just longer. Reminded her of him. That isn’t the secret; ev’rybody knows that.”

McCoy hadn’t, but he doesn’t say anything.

“My stepdad used to say it was the only thing that made me pretty—if I cut it, I’d just look like the little piece of trash that I was.” There’s an emphasis on the words that suggests they aren’t random—that Jamie’s used them, or heard them, before. “But that isn’t the secret, either—who cares about that shit.”

“I do,” McCoy manages, and has to work to keep his fingers from tightening on her shoulders and on her scalp.

“Yeah, well, you’re crazy. Anyway. Always wanted to cut it, but never did. Mom liked it too much, and I didn’t want to look trashier than I already was. Am.”

“You’re not,” McCoy whispers, and this time his arms tighten around her before he can stop himself. “You’re not,” he says again, and the words are completely inadequate, but they’re all he has. “You’re not, and one of these days I’m going to find that asshole and kill him.”

Jamie wriggles, and he loosens his hold, enough to let her roll away if she wants. But she seems content once she feels less confined: she settles back into place and rests a hand approximately over his heart. “Never cut it, even though—here’s the secret, Bones, so listen up—even though he used to drag me around the goddamn house with it. Mom’d be off-planet like usual, Sam’d be somewhere else, and I’d do something to piss him off and he’d grab me by the hair so I couldn’t get away from him. At first it was just so he could keep me in one place while he slapped me around, but then when I was about twelve he decided to work in blow jobs, too.”

McCoy drops his hand from her head like it’s just stung him. “I will fucking kill him,” he hisses. McCoy knew that something had happened—knew there was some kind of problem, maybe even abuse—but he hadn’t known it was anything like that. Hadn’t let himself believe it was anything like that. “I swear to God, Jamie, I’m going to find that asshole and tear his fucking throat out, after I rip his fucking balls off with pliers.”

She makes a sound that might be a mangled half-laugh, but she pulls away again, shaking her head. “I didn’t— It was a long time ago, OK? I’m just telling you so that you know. I don’t like having people touch it, ’cept for you, anyway. And I’m telling you so that you don’t go, ‘Why are you cutting off your beautiful hair?’ or some shit when we go to the salon tomorrow. That’s where we’re going. I don’t know if I told you.”

She’d be gorgeous bald, or with hair down to her knees. He doesn’t know how to explain this to her.

“You know,” she says, and her voice is slower now, like she’s finally ready for sleep. Like she said what she needed to say, and the poisons, for now, have been expelled. “You know, all the crazy shit I’ve done in my life, and I’ve never actually been to a hair salon.”

“Never?”

“Shit, no. They’re like freaking temples of girlification or something. They’ll probably kick me out the second I walk in tomorrow.”

“They’ll probably figure your money’s as green as anyone else’s.”

“Mmm,” she says, not quite an agreement. She shifts around again until she finds his hand with hers, and she moves it, decisively, back to her hair.

“You really want—”

“Were you not fuckin’ listening when I said I like it when it’s you? And besides, I’m never gonna have it like this again, so last chance or whatever.”

He makes his fingers as gentle as he can, and runs them through Jamie’s hair until long after her eyes have fallen closed. McCoy himself doesn’t sleep until nearly dawn.

+||+||+

    
Unlike Jamie, he’s done this before. He remembers taking Jocelyn to several appointments and passing the time by reading, when they were first married and had only one car as well as the desire to go everywhere together. And he even went himself, a few days before their wedding, an occasion that called for a decent haircut. That time sticks out, of course, but none of the rest do, particularly—as far as McCoy could tell at the time, women enjoyed getting their hair cut, but it was a necessary, quotidian pleasure, usually one of a string of Saturday errands for himself and Jocelyn.

He can see the tension in Jamie’s shoulders and the straightness of her spine as she follows the stylist into the back. In combat training, she’ll take on anyone, regardless of size or greater experience; her approach to the casual anarchy of bar fights is similar. There’s no apprehension, even when she seems to know she’s going to lose—there’s just a ferocious desire to stay standing and do as much damage to her opponent as possible before she goes down. But he has yet to see her display anything like fear.

She’s back there a long time, and McCoy has to keep himself from looking up from his PADD every five minutes—it’s a haircut, not a phaser battle, and anyway she’s starting out with enough hair that it’ll probably take a while to rid her of it.

He does manage to keep himself from glancing up every time he wants to, but he can’t fool himself into thinking that he’s taking in any of the words on the screen.

He’s reading and rereading the same sentence on Andorian bacterial respiratory infections when Jamie’s voice says, “Hey. I’m done.”

He looks up, and a sort of laugh wants to bubble up from his throat: He’d been preparing himself to look at a stranger, but the person in front of him, divested of nearly a meter of blond hair, looks the same to him as she did a few hours ago. Spiky and cropped, it suits her, drawing the gaze to the bow of her lips (_Artemis,_ he thinks, _not Cupid_), the startling glacier blue of her eyes, the strangely delicate architecture of her neck.

She fidgets and puts a hand up to her hair, then seems to think better and stuffs the hand back into the pocket of her jeans. “She put some kind of mousse or something in it—probably get all over your damn hand if you try to touch it.” McCoy thinks that if he hadn’t spent most of the past eight months with Jamie, he wouldn’t understand—or maybe even notice—what she means when she takes a step forward and tilts her head just a little to the side. “I told you you'd have to wash your hands,” she mutters—and it’s true, whatever the stylist put in Jamie’s hair is viscous and still sticky—but McCoy trails his fingers over it anyway, as careful as he can not to mess up whatever unknown magic the stylist may have wrought.

Jamie steps a nearly imperceptible amount closer, just enough to lean lightly against McCoy. He traces fingertips over the short bangs, over the fine pieces by her ear, and realizes how quickly his heart is beating, fast and urgent. It’s not the place for it, they’re in public, but Jamie doesn’t move and so he doesn’t, either. “Do you like it?” he asks.

“I will,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> **This story has a sequel: [What the Thunder Brings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/66959).**


End file.
